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The ACLU has already filed a federal lawsuit and a motion to stay the bill, so that's good at least. And if you thought Walker was unpopular before, well, lol.

I don't agree with requiring ultrasounds, but wouldn't having the admitting privileges be beneficial?

This is a great bill! Liberals always say that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare", well this bill complies will all three. It requires qualified doctors to perform the risky and life-changing procedure, makes sure that women make a fully-informed decision, but ultimately keeps abortion legal.

I'm fine with that kind of stuff. It makes people make sure if they really want to do it. It's not like they're completely trying to outlaw it...

I see nothing wrong with this. It is an improvement in the safety of the procedure, and urges women to forgo an abortion without encroaching upon their rights to any considerable extent. I have always been strongly pro-choice in all matters abortion, but I could really get behind something like this.

You know, it's funny. When the federal health care bill (The Affordable Care Act) was being debated, Republicans in both the House and the Senate were crying foul over what they saw as government intrusion in the people's health care. And then they go ahead and do something like this, forcing people to undergo an unnecessary medical procedure at the expense of the patient. And when it comes to the requirement to have the doctors at abortion clinics have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, this is simply a way to eliminate abortion clinics since very few hospitals allow doctors who perform abortions admitting privileges.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the U.S. is a completely backwards country when it comes to people's civil rights. Beyond the freedom of speech (which even then some governments in the U.S. attempt to restrict) and the freedom to bear arms, the U.S. has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world. It has tailed in every civil rights movement, from women's rights to slavery, to abortion, to equal rights for the LGBT community.

Forcing clinics to have admitting privileges ensures that many will shut down because they don't have or can't get them. It has nothing to do with the skill of the medical staff or the quality of care at the clinic so to say that these restrictions are making things safer for women is ingenuous at best.

Ultrasounds are medically unnecessary and they cost money. They're like a poll tax - an extra burden designed to reduce the number of people looking to exercise their freedom of choice. Only instead of voting it's access to abortion services.

Abortions are already safe when people have free access to them. It's when you restrict the options that people get desperate. Forcing more clinics to close, forcing extra procedures makes it harder to get an abortion. It should not be hard to get one because that will cause some women to suffer. Either they will have to pay more money or make other sacrifices, they will seek alternate and unsafe methods, or they will be forced to keep a pregnancy they don't wish to have. That is not the "safe, legal, and rare" that people talk about. "Safe, legal, and rare" is about having free access so that no one is forced into unsafe and illegal methods. The rare part is about not having so many unwanted pregnancies in the first place, not about keeping the same numbers of unwanted pregnancies while reducing the number who can get abortions. That should be obvious. I mean, imagine that there are on average 100 women for every 10,000 women who are pregnant and looking for abortions. You can either provide education and contraceptive help to reduce that number of pregnancies in the first place, and therefore the number of abortions, or you can just restrict the number of abortions that are allowed regardless of the number of pregnancies.
They are not, as Freaky seems to imply, the same thing and what people who advocate for abortion rights mean when they say they want abortions to be rare.

tl;dr laws like these only make it harder to get an abortion and force people into extra, unnecessary hardship

Except it isn't. It's requiring forced ultrasounds in a devious way designed to try to guilt trip the woman into walking back her decision, and making her submit to an unwanted procedure.

See above.

Not necessarily. Those admitting privileges are a clever way of masking the real intentions of the bill by making it look like they care about making the process safe and legal. The easiest way to get to the clinic staff is via those admitting privileges.

Or it's just another clever way to curb abortions overall and making women willing to seek less-than-quality healthcare options form elsewhere in their desperation, a la Kermit Gosnell.

Meaning, if the Democrats proposed it it'd be a wonderfully thoughtful idea.

On the first part of that, I'd think that would be wanted by any government of any political stripe since higher birth rates means more tax-paying citizens.

Second half, of course, that's not desirable at all

Some may close down in the short term, yes. That's unfortunate. But wouldn't others open up later who meet the criteria? It's not like all clinics go away forever.

It's like saying we can't enforce new food standard guidelines because that may cause some current producers to close up shop. Adapt and get better.

It'd be a bad proposal regardless who proposed it. A bad idea doesn't suddenly become right when it's proposed by someone else.

No, they wouldn't, because the same problem that those clinics faced would stop a new clinic from opening. Many hospitals do not want to grant admitting privileges to doctors who perform abortions, and so any clinic that attempts to open will be prohibited from doing so. Also, if you look at abortion clinics that have shut down, you'll discover that new ones rarely, if ever, replace them. That is because governments in the U.S. are making it so difficult to do so. Here's another interesting titbit of information, if, as the governments say, instituting laws such as this would improve patient care by making it safer for women to have an abortion, why then do they not do the same for cosmetic surgeons running their own clinics? There is a double standard going on here. Plain and simple, the goal of laws such as these is to shut down abortion providers, effectively making the state abortion-free.

Of course, we all know that just because you make it difficult to have an abortion, doesn't mean they won't be done. And many more women will be having them, and some wont survive.

How come?

I think it should be the same all around. Surgery is surgery.

Goes back to Livewire's point that there's an ulterior motive. I don't deny that, and I don't like it. It's ridiculous. That's clearly their intention. But, on the surface I think it's a safe idea, which is why I said if another party came up with it that the not-so-hidden agenda aspect would be removed.

For the simple reason that it's a lot easier for anti-abortion advocates to harass and picket a hospital than an abortion provider. Hospitals are far more susceptible to outside pressure, but also pressure from within. They're made up of board members, doctors, patients, and donors, all of whom exert tremendous influence on what services hospitals are willing to provide. Then there are those hospitals who are religiously affiliated and won't allow anything involving abortion to take place in their facility, even when pregnant women need medical care that could save their lives. And other hospitals are publicly supported institutions that are subject to local or regional government pressures for grants or reimbursements, meaning if the government doesn't approve of abortions, in order to protect their funding, the hospital will not offer the service. And because the hospitals refuse to permit abortions to take place within their walls, abortion doctors are not given admitting privileges.

Dentistry is also surgery, but dentists also do not have admitting privileges in a hospital. Again, the only reason abortion providers are being singled out is because of an aversion to abortions in general. Is it fair? No. And that's why the law is being challenged.

Anything a human can conceive of or create can be perverted into a means to do harm. In the wrong hands, those safe ideas can be, and are, used to disadvantage people, in this case women.

In other words, this is a hurtful bill disguised with a feel-good package. Got it.

You misunderstand. Yes, having Doctors with high-level admittance privileges would probably be good, they'd be highly trained and skilled, not to mention expensive. But having them in scenario is like having calling a SWAT team in to capture the kid who stole your bike. Unnecessary.

And it's hard to open new clinics when most of the federal dollars don't make their way to the clinics because they provide abortions. Something WI, MI, VA, OK, ND, etc, have already tried to do. ;(

I expect the mothers will be expected to pay exorbitant costs for the ultrasound? When some of them are possibly making the decision because they feel they aren't in a financial decision to support a child?

...That was well thought-through.

That created a hilarious mental image

Ah, that's the probably the bigger issue then. That needs to change

[QUOTE=Jay_37040;7726977]Plain and simple, the goal of laws such as these is to shut down abortion providers, effectively making the state abortion-free./QUOTE]

The same logic could be applied to Democrat's calls for gun control.

But the fact is that there are NO abortion-free states. Legal abortions take place in all 50 states, including the most conservative states.

I am not a fan of this. Abortion is not exactly a nice thing, but still should remain safe and legal, all these laws will do is lead to desperate women seeking out unsafe abortions. If people want something bad enough, they will find some way to get it, even if that means taking risks and going to unsafe measures to get it. Banning abortion will never really work, it's better in my opinion to have it be safe and legal than to try and ban it and have people get hurt when they try to go the illegal route.

Let's not get started on the gun control issue.


North Dakota has only one abortion provider in the entire state. That means only women in that state with the means to travel have access to a safe abortion services provider. One, in an entire state. That state, effectively, is officially abortion-free as a result. The consequence of this is that women who cannot make the trip to that abortion provider must rely on other means to get an abortion, some of which are decidedly not safe, and could potentially be fatal to both the mother and the foetus. So while you are technically correct, practically you are not. Unless the situation in these low abortion provider states is rectified, shares in companies that make coat hangers will skyrocket.

But abortion is still legal in North Dakota, and there is still a legal abortion provider there. Nothing in North Dakota law requires there to only be one abortion provider. That's just a coincidence. Liberals want abortion to be legal, but they don't really want it to be safe or rare, since they oppose laws that would make it more safe and more rare.

Really, what's wrong with letting a woman see her baby before she decides to murder it? Even your computer asks your if you're sure before you delete and important file.

So first you call the blastocyst an actual baby, but then you equate it to nothing more than a computer file. Which is it?

Livewire, it doesn't even need to be the blastocyst. The moment the fertilization envelope forms around the egg cell, that's when the conservatives want to control what a woman does with her uterus. And sometimes they don't even wait until that long.

Yes, all true. But... why can't they just open another one or more than that? O_o Problem solved.

That's a terrible reason because they won't have to keep the child if they deliver it.

Red herring is red. I didn't equate a baby to a computer file; I was just using an analogy.

As a woman, I can adamantly say that this bill is some serious bullcrap. If you can't see the true intention behind this, then read between the lines.

I'm an unemployed college student, if I'm raped and impregnated, where the hell am I going to get the financial stability to support myself and my child for 18 years? In some cases, abortion is the best option. If someone is in a situation where their quality of life would be much better off without the added responsibility of a child, then abortion should be an option.

All I see in this bill is that they want to guilt trip women in changing their minds and keeping the babies. Requiring ultrasounds to point out the baby's external features to the mother? That's some manipulative bull right there. Many women who have necessary abortions already go through trauma, they don't need salt on an open wound.

As Livewire mentioned, all I can see this bill doing is upping the percentage of less-than-quality, potentially dangerous abortions being performed.